Mobile wireless devices in wireless networks usually depend on a battery for their operating power. To extend the time that the devices are capable of operating between battery charges, the devices may resort to sleep periods (i.e., periods of non-operation, at least for the radio circuits, when the battery drain is greatly reduced). During a sleep period the data to be communicated to/from the device may be queued up until the device is operational again. Knowing how long to sleep (without obsoleting and/or missing necessary data) may be problematic even in fairly simple systems. However, the complexity of modern network communications and the mixture of different data types in a network (e.g., text, video, voice-over-IP, etc.), makes it difficult to determine a balance between saving more power (which may be achieved with longer sleep periods) and not obsoleting and/or missing necessary data (which may be achieved with shorter sleep periods).